20 Amazing Facts About Half Of A Yellow Sun Writer Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a great Nigerian writer, who has really had an interesting life growing up in Nigeria, later relocating abroad.

Born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie. While the family’s ancestral hometown is Abba in Anambra State, Chimamanda grew up within the walls of the University Of Nigeria (Nsukka) but currently based in America.

The popular Nigerian award winning novel writer, has written a lot of books and has also achieved alot since she took writing serious at age 18. Below are some of the interesting facts about the popular Nigerian Novel writer.
1. Her father James Nwoye Adichie was a professor of statistics at the university, later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria (NSUKKA) and her mother Grace Ifeoma was also the university’s first female registrar.

2. Although she’s a writer, Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria (NSUKKA) for a year and a half.



3. At age 18, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university’s Catholic medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria and moved to the United States for college.

4. After studying communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, she transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University to live closer to her sister, who had a medical practice in Coventry.

5. She received a bachelor’s degree from Eastern, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2001.

6. In 2003, she completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale University.






7. Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–06 academic year. In 2008 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also been awarded a 2011–12 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

8. she teaches writing workshops in United States.

9. She was shortlisted in 2002 for the Caine Prize for her short story “You in America”.

10. In 2003, her story “That Harmattan Morning” was selected as joint winner of the BBC Short Story Awards.

11. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), received wide critical acclaim; it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005).

12. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Half of a Yellow Sun has been adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele, starring BAFTA winner and Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA award-winner Thandie Newton, and was released in 2014.[10]

13. Her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of short stories.






14. In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s “20 Under 40″ Fiction Issue.[11] Adichie’s story, “Ceiling”, was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories.

15. In 2013 she published her third novel, Americanah which was selected by the New York Times as one of The 10 Best Books of 2013.[12]

16. In April 2014 she was named as one of 39 writers aged under 40[13] in the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club project celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014.[14]

17. Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.






18. Adichie published a collection of poems in 1997 (Decisions) and a play (For Love of Biafra) in 1998.

19. she won the O. Henry prize for “The American Embassy”.

20. She also won the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award) and a 2007 Beyond Margins Award for her novel “Half of a Yellow Sun”.